The Day the Bells Rang for Salk

On April 12, 1955, scientists at the University of Michigan announced that Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was "safe, effective, and potent." Within minutes, church bells rang across the country. Factory whistles blew. Strangers embraced on sidewalks. Parents who had spent every summer terrified — keeping children away from swimming pools and movie theaters, watching for the first signs of fever — wept openly in department stores and schoolyards.

But polio did not vanish that afternoon. Children still lay in iron lungs. The virus still circulated in communities from Boston to Bangalore. The full campaign of vaccination, boosters, and global eradication efforts would stretch across decades. The last case of wild polio in the Americas would not occur until 1991.

Yet nobody who heard those bells doubted the outcome. The first victory made the final victory certain. Polio's reign was broken not when the last case disappeared, but when the first proven weapon against it was declared effective.

Paul understood this logic. "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep." Easter morning was the announcement — safe, effective, potent against death itself. The enemy still operates. We still grieve at hospital bedsides and stand over open graves. But the outcome is not in doubt. Christ must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet, and the last enemy to be destroyed is death. The bells have already rung. The victory is sure.